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Automate EVERYTHING

There’s a certain beauty to automatization. The machine works silently, completing time-wasting tasks for you, while you spend your time doing things that matter.

I like to keep my computer tidy – a cluttered desktop just makes me frustrated. Why? Because it takes forever to find something in a digital mess. The desktop tends to become cluttered, however, because cleaning isn’t fun. Moving icons to the right folders is in many ways just like cleaning, and cleaning is a chore. Chores are for the most part never fun.

To battle this, I wrote a script some time back which cleaned my desktop once per boot and put the contents into a folder with today’s date. With the hard drive storage capacity available, storing the vast amounts of files isn’t an issue. I have a lot of trash stored, but it’s easy to navigate and it keeps my desktop tidy.

Today, I took care of another issue. How do you keep track of your files if you have two computers? How do you transfer files? And why should you have to spend time on moving files? I bought a new laptop for school and work, which meant I had to find a way to move files. Windows file sharing works, but it’s time consuming. Dropbox could eliminate the problem, but it’s not suitable for large amounts of data. I do use Dropbox if it’s important only to have one version of the file, or if I need to access it on other devices, however.

I wrote another script as the solution. Every time i log on, it moves all the contents of an upload-folder to my server if I’m connected to my home network. This way, I can drop files into the folder, and forget about them. The script also downloads all files from a remote folder, and stores them locally in another folder. Essentially, I can move files asynchronous via a server.

All of this took some time to set up, but I’ll save more time in the long run.